Abstract:

Procuring of operations from external service providers has become a common practice among manufacturing companies in recent years. This kind of outsourcing transfers some tasks to an external service provider organisation and typically also brings employees from these service provider organisations to the customer’s worksite thereby creating multi-employer worksites. Ensuring sufficient safety levels in such shared worksites is more demanding and challenging than safety management in traditional single employer workplaces. For safety management the major challenges of outsourcing arise from differing working cultures, unclear responsibilities and insufficient communication. In multi-employer worksites, the operations performed by one party may also endanger the safety of other persons working at the site. Nonetheless, ensuring sufficient levels of safety at multi-employer worksites is the responsibility of both the customers and their service providers. However, many service providers find it far from easy to implement effective safety management when operating with various customers at diverse worksites.

This study discusses safety management at multi-employer manufacturing worksites. The main focus is on service provider operations though the customer viewpoint is also considered. The subject is approached by investigating the consideration of safety at multi-employer manufacturing worksites, charting the safety management problems encountered and reviewing the contributory factors of accidents. These issues were studied using the following methods: company interviews conducted in eight Finnish service provider and ten customer organisations; a questionnaire sent to parties operating in manufacturing industry (n=75) and an analysis of fatal accidents during 1999–2008 at manufacturing worksites (n=83). The results of these studies were used in the construction of an operational model of safety management for service providers operating in manufacturing worksites. The operational model development process was carried out in collaboration with the service provider organisations taking part in the research project. After 17 months of use, the feasibility of the model was evaluated by means of a questionnaire sent to the service providers.

The results of this study show that various safety issues, such as communication and hazard identification, have gained great recognition at the multi-employer manufacturing worksites while management of some other areas of safety has received only limited attention (e.g. safety performance assessment). In addition, implementation of safety cooperation between service providers and customers at multi-employer worksites vary greatly between different partners. This study shows that both service providers and customers encounter various challenges in managing safety at multi-employer worksites. Such difficulties include the proper implementation of communication, identification of hazards, preplanning of work tasks and organisation of induction training. It is significant that the accident report analysis showed that many of these problematic issues are also common factors contributing to accidents that had occurred at multi-employer manufacturing worksites. Removing these obstacles is necessary before a better safety management level can be achieved at worksites shared by different operators.

The purpose of the operational model for safety management is to overcome the deficiencies and challenges encountered in safety management at manufacturing multi-employer worksites. The operational model supports the implementation of safety management in the service provider organisations by discussing the management of safety from a theoretical viewpoint and also by providing examples of effective practices and tools to promote safety in everyday operations. The operational model is targeted mainly at managing service providers’ safety activities but it can also be used in other contexts, such as in planning cooperation at multi-employer worksites, and in promoting the implemented safety measures.